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Republicans ask Chu to explain Prologis, Solyndra links

By Brian Wingfield

Bloomberg News

Posted:
02/17/2012 07:30:35 PM PST

House Republicans asked U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu about a $1.4 billion partial loan guarantee to a solar-energy company that was to buy panels from failing Solyndra, which went out of business three months later.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee Friday said Chu may have intervened on behalf of San Francisco-based Prologis in June 2011 and help prop up Solyndra after restructuring its $535 million U.S. loan. The panel said documents obtained in its investigation, and not released, showed Solyndra was to be the only supplier in the first phase of Prologis's Project Amp to install equipment on rooftops managed by the company.

Rep. Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican and committee head, and Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican and chairman of the investigations panel, "are greatly concerned at the extraordinary measures the Obama administration appears to have taken in keeping Solyndra afloat," the committee said in a statement.

The lawmakers asked Chu in a letter released Friday to provide by Feb. 24 a range of documents to get a better understanding of the "Project Amp loan guarantee, as well as the relationship between Solyndra and Project Amp."

Republicans have questioned whether President Barack Obama's campaign fundraiser George Kaiser, whose family foundation was Solyndra's biggest investor, pressed for the $535 million loan. Kaiser has said he didn't lobby. Prologis's co-chief executive officers have contributed to Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Democrats.

When Prologis's loan closed in late September, Solyndra wasn't a supplier to Project Amp, Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman, said. The Energy Department announced Sept. 30 that Prologis's loan guarantee had closed.

"Secretary Chu strongly supported Project Amp because it will be the largest rooftop project in U.S. history and is expected to generate enough clean, renewable electricity to power over 88,000 homes while supporting at least a thousand jobs all across the country," LaVera said in an email.

Project Amp was supported by companies including Bank of America, and NRG Energy, he said.

Chu may have pushed U.S. backing for Prologis while the Energy Department helped renegotiate Solyndra's loan as part of a last-ditch U.S. effort to keep the Fremont company alive, according to the committee's statement.

"It appears that Solyndra's involvement in Project Amp was a significant factor both in the negotiations" to avoid Solyndra's bankruptcy and to close the loan guarantee for Prologis, Upton and Stearns said in the letter to Chu.